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  ...her, and Dr Wesley or Dr Walmisley, who should preside (it did not much matter which), would say to her, "My dear Mrs Pontifex, I never yet played upon so remarkable an instrument." Then she would give him one of her very sweetest smiles and say she feared he was flattering her, on which he would rejoin with some pleasant little trifle about remarkable men (the remarkable man being for the moment Ernest) having invariably had remarkable women for their mothers--and so on and so on. The advantage of doing one's praising for oneself is that one can lay it on so thick and exactly in the right places.  
Theobald wrote Ernest a short and surly letter _a propos_ of his aunt's intentions in this matter.
"I will not commit myself," he said, "to an opinion whether anything will come of it; this will depend entirely upon your own exertions; you have had singular advantages hitherto, and your kind aunt is showing every desire to befriend you, but you must give greater proof of stability and steadiness of character than you have given yet if this organ matter is not to prove in the end to...   Butler, Samuel

Excerpt from The Way of All Flesh · This quote is about praise · Search on Google Books to find all references and sources for this quotation.

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